BOSTON - Around the turn of the 20th century, photographers called pictorialists combined fine arts sensibilities with new developing processes to infuse their images with allegoric imaginative power.

Working with black and white and innumerable shades of gray, photographers like Alfred Stieglitz, Frederick H. Evans and Gertrude Kasebier created visual poems meant to evoke moods and emotions rather than merely document the everyday world.

The Museum of Fine Arts has brought together masterpieces and lesser-known photos from that movement in "Truth and Beauty,’’ an exhibit of sumptuous beauty that showcases newly acquired images by and of the region’s greatest pictorialist, F. Holland Day.

Organized by Anne E. Havinga, senior curator of photography at the MFA, the exhibit showcases 51 images by 23 artists from the U.S., England and Europe who were regarded as the giants of pictorialism that flourished from 1885 through 1915.

She explained as photography grew in popularity and the new Kodak box camera, introduced in 1888, made picture taking more accessible to the general public, the emerging pictorialists borrowed from then-current art movements, such as impressionism and symbolism, to create images that invited personal response and interpretation.

In contrast to today’s junior high students with cell phone cameras who document every aspect of their lives in bland and blaring color, pictorialist photos on display dazzle the inner eye as wonders of tonal subtlety and detail that suggest stories that stir viewers’ feelings in complex ways.

In delicately nuanced photos like "The Hand of Man,’’ Stieglitz, who became America’s dominant pictorialist,’’ transformed a detailed photo of converging train tracks leading to New York City into a powerful statement about industrialism.

Sharing Day’s fascination with religious iconography, Kasebier dressed a woman in flowing clothes in what resembles a contemporary barn in "The Manger’’ to create her own Nativity scene of haunting beauty.

Edward Streichen’s 1901 portrait of Day as a Bohemian artiste, dressed in black, conveys the pictorialists' signature fusion of rebelliousness and self-conscious theatricality.

In the exhibit, the MFA is showcasing a newly acquired gem of photographic history created by one of the state’s most original and audacious artists.

The museum purchased from the Norwood Historical Society Day’s emblematic treasure, "The Last Seven Words,’’ a monumental seven-panel self portrait in which the Norwood resident photographed himself in seven close-ups as Jesus Christ on the cross.

Additionally, the MFA acquired three photos by other artists of Day, a controversial photographer who turned his own life into art.

Born in 1864 into a prosperous family, Day co-founded a publishing company that stylishly printed about 100 titles. By his 30s, Day had established himself among the nation’s preeminent photographers for his frankly sensuous studies of young, often nude males but over time was eclipsed by the competitive Stieglitz.

Page 2 of 2 - Patricia Fanning, Day’s biographer who serves on the NHS’s board of trustees, said members decided selling Day’s "masterpiece" and three other works was in the society’s "best interests.’’

"We thought about it for a very long time and weighed the pros and cons. There were security issues as well as complications providing a controlled climate for a work that fragile. We hope to use interest from the sale to maintain the F. Holland Day house,’’ at 93 Day St., Norwood, which houses the nonprofit NHS. Fanning said both the board of the NHS and membership approved the sale.

The author of "Through an Uncommon Lens: The Life and Photography of F. Holland Day,’’ she declined to name the sale price.

Fanning said a fragment of the "crown of thorns’’ Day wore in the 1898 work was given to the MFA as a gift from the Norwood Historical Society.

An audacious work in concept and execution, Day’s "The Seven Last Words’’ takes its title from phrases spoken by Jesus from his crucifixion until his death, each matched with a self-portrait of Day in various stages of agony and, perhaps, the ecstasy of death.

There is lots to admire and enjoy in this exhibit beyond Day’s iconic image and portraits of him by J. Craig Annan, Edward Steichen and one by Clarence H. White in which Day appears in Bohemian costume beside the shadowy image of a naked black male who was likely his favorite model, Alexandre Skeete, an art student from British Guiana.

Photographs more than a century old retain their remarkable detail and tonal subtleties.

Alvin Langdon Coburn’s 1905 photogravure of "St. Paul’s Cathedral’’ and Peter Henry Emerson’s 1886 platinum print are sumptuous examples of images by photographers who pioneered a form of rarely surpassed artistry that still dazzles the eye.

Chris Bergeron is a Daily News staff writer. Contact him at cbergeron@wickedlocal.com or 508-626-4448. Follow us on Twitter @WickedLocalArts and on Facebook.